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Gone With the Wind
Enron, the financially (and, some would say, morally) bankrupt energy trading firm, announced this week that it will sell its wind-turbine business to General Electric. If the transaction is approved by bankruptcy court and federal regulators, Enron will use the proceeds — a rumored $250 million — to repay creditors, while GE will use the […]
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Green-chip Investment
One of the world’s largest financial organizations, HSBC, has earmarked nearly $50 million to create a five-year environmental program called Investing in Nature. The program will funnel money to three environmental nonprofits organizations — WWF, Botanic Gardens Conservation International, and Earthwatch — to support projects that enhance access to safe drinking water and help preserve […]
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There’s No Business Like Snow Business
Former President Clinton’s eleventh-hour ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks just received yet another blow from the Bush administration, when the Interior Department, acting on the request of the snowmobile industry, offered three alternatives to an outright ban. Option one: Delay the phase-out by one year. Option two: Limit the number […]
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Send Me the Ivory Bill
Call it a wild goose chase: A 30-day search through a southern Louisiana swamp was called off yesterday after some of the world’s top ornithologists failed to find the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. The bird, once the largest North American woodpecker with a wingspan of up to 33 inches, has not been seen for certain since […]
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GE, We Bring Bad Things to Fish
The Bush administration asked a federal judge yesterday to dismiss a challenge by General Electric to the Superfund toxic waste cleanup law. Companies faced with multi-million dollar cleanup costs have repeatedly attacked the 1980 law, arguing that it leads to more legal tangles than environmental improvements. In the most recent sally, GE filed suit in […]
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They’re All Ears
Farm states and the environment both stand to gain from a provision in a Democratic energy bill that would require gasoline refiners to triple their use of corn-based ethanol by 2012. The provision, written by Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), would also phase out the use of the petrochemical MTBE by 2006. Both ethanol […]
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Canada Dry?
Perhaps following the cue of its southern neighbor, Canada announced earlier this week that it’s in no hurry to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. The announcement, made by Environment Minister David Anderson, marked a shift from an earlier suggestion that the nation might endorse Kyoto by as early as June. With the […]
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Kenya Believe It?
If Kenya gets its way, water distribution in east Africa could change dramatically: The nation’s energy minister, Raila Odinga, has called for a review of the 1929 British colonial treaty that grants Egypt the right to veto projects involving use of the headwaters of the Nile. Odinga called the treaty outdated and said it fails […]
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They Drilled Kenny!
President Bush approved on Friday a plan to bury the nation’s radioactive waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, provoking a firestorm of outrage and an immediate lawsuit by the state’s governor, Kenny Guinn (R). The federal government has spent 10 years and $4 – $7 billion on studying the Yucca site to determine if it is […]
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Sea Change
The rise in sea levels this century due to glaciers and ice caps melting away under higher global temperatures could be almost three times what scientists have previously estimated, according to new data. The new information predicts that ocean levels will increase by between 6.7 and 10.6 inches by 2100 from glacial melt alone. The […]
